Letters to the editor 9/27

Cool heads must rule in easily panicked world

There's been much righteous talk in the press about our right to free speech in the case of the nut in California who did a film about Mohammed which has set off a firestorm across the Muslim world. It does indeed boil down to a question of free speech. Thomas Friedman in The New York Times writes that an insult "does not entitle people to go out and attack embassies and kill innocent diplomats." Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney castigated the administration for "apologizing" when our Cairo embassy wisely made clear (before the uprising) that we do not approve of insulting religious faiths.

Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes held that the right to free speech does not apply to falsely shouting fire in a crowded theater. Today's world is a crowded, easily panicked theater in which speech can become action.

From the Christian crusaders to today's Muslim jihads, religious fanatics have caused wars. It is time to step back, see what is going on and not be drawn by fanatics, ours or theirs, into more wars with the Muslim world. The two we have are enough. We no longer ride horses, wear armor and carry swords. Pakistan has atom bombs that could be stolen and moved across borders. ... If ever there was a time for cool heads to rule, this is it.

John Jacobs

Highland

Turning down pipeline was big Obama mistake

America, remember when Barack Obama was running for president? He was going to appoint someone to go over the budget "line by line to eliminate waste." What happened to that?

He turned down the Keystone Pipeline. How could that not mean cheaper gas prices? Or at the very least, we would send money to Canada for oil instead of to people who hate us. Please contact your Congress and Senate representatives to change this radical decision. Gas prices are killing us!

Former Gov. Mitt Romney and Congressman Paul Ryan will be a breath of fresh air. They are both proud Americans. Romney, a business genius, with sound world policy views combined with Ryan, a budget genius, whose ideas can save Medicare and Social Security and save our children's and grandchildren's futures from being buried in debt.

We need a change, America.

We are on the wrong path. We can't keep spending more than we have; no one can. Europe is proving that.

Our children deserve the American dream. We have to get rid of the borrow, tax and spend politicians. They are destroying America's future.

If these two men, with their qualifications, can't fix America, then no one can.

Simple choice!

Bruce Mark

Hopewell Junction

100 percent should have food, homes, health care

Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney certainly had it wrong in his speech to the multimillionaire financiers in Palm Beach.

He claimed that 47 percent of Americans think they are entitled to health care, food and housing.

Actually all Americans, the 1 percent, the 47 percent and the 99 percent - all Americans - should have access to health care, no Americans should go without food, and no Americans should go homeless.

I can understand how we may fall short of these goals, but Romney even disparaged the concept that these should be our goals.

How can we claim to be the greatest nation on earth and proclaim that we are satisfied with many Americans going hungry, having no health care, or are homeless?

How heartless.

Shame on you, Mitt.

Herb Stoller

Poughkeepsie

It is wrong to compare abortion to Holocaust

As a person who fled Nazi Germany, and who lost family members in the Holocaust, I find two recent letters to the editor quite offensive.

One was by Pamela Woodward, "Take action against evil in our midst," (Sept. 19), the other by Vincent Ferro, "Catholic, Democratic policies not compatible," (Sept. 20). They compare the Nazis' calculated persecution, torture and murder of 6 million Jews (for racial motives) to abortion, a legal act in the United States which rightfully should be a personal matter between a woman, her physician and her family.

No one here supports "mass murder," one of the extreme comments used in their argument against abortion.

It is highly doubtful that any woman takes abortion of her unborn child lightly.

Rather she, and the majority of the population in the United States (CBS/New York Times poll September 2012), agree that personal circumstances exist when this is the option she must sadly choose.

Anita Morrison

Poughkeepsie

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Letters to the editor 9/27

There's been much righteous talk in the press about our right to free speech in the case of the nut in California who did a film about Mohammed which has set off a firestorm across the Muslim world.